TILFAR - Things I Learned From Advanced R

A list of things I learned from each of the sections of Advanced R:

I - Foundations:

• I notice that I use the switch function a ton now, where previously I used if-else nests.
• I use condition-handling to pass errors back to the user of my Shiny apps now.
• I now know what an Environment is and where and why R would look for something. (This helps both in function-writing and debugging!)
• I write a heck of a lot of functions (this ties into II: Functional Programming, of course)

II - Functional Programming

• I map the crap out of everything now (if I didn’t before, it’s way worse now!), and have learned to use functions in a ton of different ways.
• I now understand what a function factory is, and what to do if a function somehow returns me a function instead (as opposed to panicking about it!)
• I now know about a series of modifiers to help adjust function behaviours (memoise, quietly, safely, possibly) - although I use tryCatch as much as I do these.

III - OOP

• I wrote a package for S3 usage! It’s cool to minimize the user interface for multiple platforms.
• I’m now comfortable USING an R6 package - I don’t know that I’d reach for an R6 system now but the whole “function$method” thing doesn’t scare me anymore
• S4? wot that

IV Metaprogramming

• I now know how to pass expressions to tidyverse stuff!
• I now know where to look in the Metaprogramming and how to intepret the text.

V Techniques

• Debugging: I now know how to use browser, and love it! Also debug()!
• Performance measure/improve: still don’t do a ton of this, even though I’m a shiny dev.
• I … still don’t know C++ or Rcpp. 🤷